Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

moved Amendment No. 62: 62: Clause 6 , page 5, line 42, at end insert ““, or (ii) made with the Secretary of State or with the Welsh Ministers;”” The noble and learned Lord said: I have already outlined the circumstances in which the exemption provided by Clause 6 is extended to non-NHS providers of ambulance and transport services when responding to emergency circumstances. In brief, where a relevant trust has arranged for another body to carry out an emergency response on its behalf, we do not think that criminal liability should attach to one body but not the other. To allow that might risk reducing the availability of such alternative forms of transport to NHS trusts, which would not ultimately be in the public interest. The three technical government amendments inthe group will ensure that the range of potential commissioners of ambulance and transport services to act in lieu of NHS providers is complete. Amendment No. 62 adds the Secretary of State and the Welsh Ministers to the range of potential commissioners of these services. Under Section 23(1) of the National Health Service Act 1977, the Secretary of State can arrange with any person or body for them to provide, or assist in providing, any service in that Act. A similar provision is made for Welsh Ministers under Section 10 of the National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006. It would be rare for ambulance or transport services to be commissioned in this way, but if they were, they would be in a position comparable with the services provided or commissioned directly by an NHS body and so should be covered by the same exemption. Amendment No. 70 corrects the omission of strategic health authorities from the definition of a ““relevant NHS body””. These authorities, established under Section 8 of the National Health Service Act 1977, do not provide ambulance services directly, but they have the power to commission ambulance and transport services. They should therefore be treated in the same way as the other relevant NHS bodies. The amendment also restructures the paragraphs so that bodies in England and Wales are treated separately, and makes some alterations to the order in which bodies are listed. I regret the errors in earlier drafts of Amendments Nos. 62 and 70, which did not list Welsh bodies correctly. In particular, we omitted a reference to Welsh Ministers and included a reference to health authorities in Wales that have now been abolished. I do hope this did not cause noble Lords any confusion. I beg to move.